A Taxonomy of Reference Wittgenstein would say that reference comes in many varieties, like sentences; the concept of reference is a family resemblance concept. We should be wary of the urge to assimilate, unify; we should respect the multiplicity (his word) of reference, like the multiplicity of language games. Gareth Evans called his book The […]
Why Do We Imagine? If we ask why humans perceive and remember, the answer is not far to seek: for the same reason many animals, particularly mammals, perceive and remember, viz. these are obviously useful traits to possess. They enable the reception and storage of information. There is no evolutionary puzzle about the existence of […]
Why Do We Think? Intelligent thought (cleverness, creativity, insight) is not common in the animal world. Intelligence without thought, and thought without intelligence, are more common, but the combination is rare. That may seem odd, given that intelligent thought is such a dandy adaptation (it can get you to the moon and back)—why isn’t it […]
Why Do We Speak? As has often been remarked, language is a rare biological accomplishment. It is not spread widely across the animal world and took billions of years to evolve. I am referring here to communicative speech not the cognitive machinery that underlies human linguistic competence (which may be directed more towards the use […]
Skepticism and Time We can’t be certain the ordinary world of material objects exists: we might be brains in a vat or perpetually dreaming. We can’t be certain that space exists, at least in the form we think of it, for the same reasons. But what about time? We are familiar with skepticism with respect […]
Anthropocentric Physical Empiricism Empiricism is the doctrine that all knowledge derives from something called “experience”. Alternatively, all (non-trivial) knowledge comes from the senses. Knowledge is ultimately reducible to “impressions” or “sense data” originating in the human sense organs. In some forms it takes on a metaphysical cast: all of realityderives from experience and is reducible […]
